WEINSTEIN: The convenient memory loss of Chris Matthews

Jamie Weinstein

Jamie Weinstein is Senior Editor of The Daily Caller. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, the New York Daily News and The Washington Examiner, among many other publications. He also worked as the Collegiate Network Journalism Fellow at Roll Call Newspaper and is the winner of the 2011 "Funniest Celebrity in Washington" contest. A regular on Fox News and other cable news outlets, Weinstein received a master’s degree in the history of international relations from the London School of Economics in 2009 and a bachelor's degree in history and government from Cornell University in 2006. He is the author of the political satire, "The Lizard King: The Shocking Inside Account of Obama's True Intergalactic Ambitions by an Anonymous White House Staffer."

Nor is President Obama the only president to be subjected to unfair attacks by the opposite party’s base. Scarborough brought up how some on the right went into loony land to attack Clinton, but what about the way George W. Bush was attacked?

I was a student at Cornell during a significant part of the Bush presidency, so I am well aware of the calumny Bush was subjected to by liberals. I saw him compared to such infamous figures as Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

And the attacks were not only the provenance of the Democratic base. Democratic members of Congress were vicious in their attacks of Bush, even accusing him of allowing 9/11 to happen.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Keith Ellison, for instance, suggested the 9/11 attacks were like Bush’s Reichstag fire, a reference to the fire that many believe Hitler staged on the German parliament and blamed on the communists in order to grab power by spreading fear of a communist takeover in Germany.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” he said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country, Hitler, in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I’m not saying Sept. 11 was a U.S. plan or anything like that because, you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box — dismiss you.”

Sure he wasn’t saying that exactly; he was just saying. And some people aren’t sure President Obama was born in Hawaii. They aren’t saying they believe he was born in Kenya, they are just saying.

Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney insinuated that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand and allowed them to happen in order to further his father’s business interests.

“It is known that President Bush’s father, through the Carlyle Group, had — at the time of the attacks — joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which have soared since Sept. 11,” she said.

One could easily go on. Forever. The point is Chris Matthews has no idea what he is talking about. But I suspect you already knew that.

There is surely some people who oppose Obama for “ethnic” reasons — I think Mathews meant racial reasons — but contrary to liberal mythology, most conservatives oppose the president for his policies. And for good reason.